The geographical metaphor

With each new novel, Houellebecq surprises. He never writes what we imagine it will offer us, while each time proof of several constants: a "visionary" lucidity about our time, as discreet as a stripper humor, relevance and coherence on the bottom, in the background of the central story of the novel itself.

This time it comes at a time of contemporary art, relationship between father and son, death and transmission, with a beautiful metaphor: that of mapping, planning and more local. Houellebecq book is also more personally than usual by putting himself in scene in his novel, with humor and detachment.

Houellebecq will probably be one of the few authors of contemporary French literature sustainably for posterity, as it is already one of the most translated, published and read in many countries of the world.

"The map and the territory" appears to be his most successful book, like a well deserved winner of the Goncourt and there no doubt, as the novel that touched me the most personally at heart.